The present study investigated whether heavy and problem drinkers among college students expected significantly more reinforcement from alcohol than their light and normal drinking peers. It also examined whether the alcohol-related expectancies of co...
The present study investigated whether heavy and problem drinkers among college students expected significantly more reinforcement from alcohol than their light and normal drinking peers. It also examined whether the alcohol-related expectancies of college students varied as a function of their drinking patterns and compared expectancies with demographic / background variables for their predictive power of drinking behaviors. A questionnaire on the expected effects of alcohol was administered to 770 male college students, and optimal alcohol-related expectancy and demographic / background predictors of drinking behavior were selected and compared via stepwise multiple regression procedures.
Results indicated that alcohol-related expectancies were different depending on drinking styles and that alcohol-related expectancies added to the predictive power of the demographic / background variables. Moderate and heavy drinkers expected alcohol to enhance their social and sexual pleasure, social assertiveness, and tension reduction more that light drinkers, but the groups did not differ in expected negative consequencies.
Problem drinkers were found to maintain stronger alcohol-related expectancies on all 8 expectancy scales than normal drinkers. These results suggest a possible mediating role of alcohol-related expectancies in college drinking problems, and possible strategies for assessment and treatment of college students at high-risk for later drinking problems.